Congressional Record

“ After ascertainment has been had that the certificates are authentic and correct in form, the tellers will count and make a list of the votes cast by the electors of the several States.” [6] The Vice President proceeded to open the certificates in alphabetical order and passed to the tellers the certificates showing the votes of the electors in each state and the District of Columbia. In each case, the tellers then read, counted, and announced the result for each state and the District of Columbia. According to the Congressional Record, the joint session consumed precisely 24 minutes. ”

“ Upon resumption of the joint session, the Vice President announced that the original certification submitted by the State of Pennsylvania would stand as regular in form and authentic.Pages H98–H112
During the Joint Session various House Members rose to make a point of order, object to the counting of the electoral votes from Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin or to make a motion. The presiding officer and Chair, Vice President Pence, held that each case required a writing signed by both a Member of the House and a Senator. None were signed by a Senator and none were received. ”

“ Senators took seats to the right of the rostrum as prescribed by law.
The joint session was called to order by the Vice President.
PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRIES
Mr. Griffith. Mr. Vice President, parliamentary inquiry.
The Vice President. The gentleman from Virginia will state his parliamentary inquiry.
Mr. Griffith. Mr. Vice President, in order to follow the Speaker’s instructions that only a limited number of people be on the floor, may I ask how one would make an objection or make a parliamentary inquiry in the future if you are not on the floor but in the gallery. ”

“ He recognizes the fact fully that he is one of a great body of men, each one of whom is charged with interests of an important character to their state or district, and many heavily weighted with special and peculiar measures of [259] national importance. These must all have their opportunity. Less than ninety working-days usually comprise the session, and there are but four of these in a congress,—from March to adjournment, and from December to March, and then repeated, constitutes a congressional term, with eight of them in a presidential term, or two a year for the four years. ”

“ Many things said and done in the Thirty-Ninth Congress, of great importance to the nation, are by necessity omitted. The reader, in forming his opinion of Congressional character and ability, will bear in mind that those who speak most frequently are not always the most useful legislators. Men from whom no quotation is made, and to whom no measure is attributed in the following pages, may be among the foremost in watchfulness for their constituents, and faithfulness to the country. ”

“ The members of the Electoral Commission were selected either as representatives of their party, or men considered the embodiment of honor and justice. The Commission consisted of five Senators, five Judges of the Supreme Court, and five Representatives from the Lower House of Congress. The attorneys were the leading lawyers of each party. The Cabinet, leading Senators, Congressmen, foreign Ministers, and distinguished people from all portions of the country, were present. ”

“ Congress makes legislative history in committee reports, floor debates and hearings, and nothing that the President says on the occasion of signing on a bill can reinterpret that record: once an enrolled bill has been attested by the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate and has been presented to the President, the legislative record is closed. ”

“ Representatives are to be inhabitants of the State for which they are chosen, to be twenty-five years old at least, and are to serve two years. Each house of representatives thus lasts for two years, and this period is usually known as “a Congress”; the fiftieth Congress will expire March 4, 1889, having completed the first century of the constitution. Representatives are assigned to the States in proportion to population, and this fact forced the provision for a decennial census, the first appearance of such a provision in modern national history. ”

“ Places must be found for them at once in the working organization which busies itself in the committee-rooms. Six years is not the term of the Senate, but only of each Senator. Reckoning from any year in which one third of the Senate is elected, the term of the majority,—the two thirds not affected by the election,—is an average of the four and the two years which it has to live. There is never a time at which two thirds of the Senate have more than four years of appointed service before them. ”

“ Your chairman was present at each and Miss Anne Martin, representing the Union, was present at each. At some of them each organization had additional representatives. Mrs. Catt attended two and our corresponding secretary, Miss Patterson, attended one. The subject was the time at which action on the Federal Amendment should be secured in both branches of Congress. When on July 20 it was found that the National Committee wished to obtain a vote in the Senate before adjournment and the Congressional Union wished to postpone it the conferences came to an end. ”

“ The reässembling of Congress, marking as it does the procession of our national history, is always regarded with interest by the people for whom it is to legislate. But it is not unsafe to say that millions more than ever before, North, South, East, and West, are looking to the Congress which opens its session to-day with an earnestness and solicitude unequaled on similar occasions in the past. ”

“ Taking Congress as the central and predominant power of the system, their object is to illustrate everything Congressional. Everybody has seen, and critics without number have said, that our form of national government is singular, possessing a character altogether its own; but there is abundant evidence that very few have seen just wherein it differs most essentially from the other governments of the world. There have been and are other federal systems quite similar, and scarcely any legislative or administrative principle of our Constitution was young even when that Constitution was framed. ”

“ Congress to meet in regular session every year on the first Monday in November, and to remain in session for at least ninety consecutive days, excepting holidays and Sundays. Its powers to be substantially the same as those exercised by the Congress of the United States. The executive power to be exercised by the President of the republic, who "shall be elected by direct votes, and an absolute majority thereof, cast on one single day, in accordance with the provisions of the law." ”

“ The Democrats were in power during the sessions of the Twenty-fifth Congress because they had a majority in the Senate as well as Andrew Jackson in the White House; but later Presidents have had both House and Senate against them. [7] It is this constant possibility of party diversity between the Executive and Congress which so much complicates our system of party government. The history of administrations is not necessarily the history of parties. Presidential elections may turn the scale of party ascendency one way, and the intermediate congressional elections may quite reverse the balance. ”

“ The Committees of the House to whom the principal topics of legislation are allotted number more than thirty. We are ruled by a score and a half of “little legislatures.” Our legislation is conglomerate, not homogeneous. The doings of one and the same Congress are foolish in pieces and wise in spots. They can never, except by accident, have any common features. Some of the Committees are made up of strong men, the majority of them of weak men; and the weak are as influential as the strong. The country can get the counsel and guidance of its ablest representatives only upon one or two subjects ”

“ The Thirty-first Congress was not alone remarkable for the great questions it confronted and its shameless recreancy to humanity and justice; it was equally remarkable for its able and eminent men. In the Senate, the great triumvirate of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, appeared in public life for the last time. ”

“ By 1910 three-fourths of the states had applied the direct primary in some form to the choice of Senators. Men selected by that method began to pour in upon the floors of Congress; finally in 1912 the two-thirds majority was secured for an amendment to the federal Constitution providing for the popular election of Senators. ”

“ After much discussion and deliberation, the two committees agreed that there should be reported in the Senate the bill which, without amendment in either House, became the law under which the procedure of the two Houses and the Electoral Commission took place. This bill was reported by me to the Senate January 18, 1877. After much debate and the rejection of sundry amendments it passed the Senate, January 24, by a vote of forty-seven yeas and seventeen nays. The negative votes were nearly all cast by Republicans. ”

“ By the mode of its election and the greater length of the term by which its seats are held, the Senate is almost altogether removed from that temptation to servile obedience to the whims of popular constituencies to which the House is constantly subject, without as much courage as the Senate has to guard its virtue. ”

“ Rather than being legislation that allows the good suits through and the frivolous ones out, this legislation effectively denies people, such as the family of Danny Guzman, their day in court, and many others. ”

“ The number of Senators shall never be less than forty, nor shall any State, if the same shall not hereafter be divided, ever have less than the number allotted to it in the second section of this article; but the Legislature may increase the whole number of Senators, in the same proportion to the whole number of Representatives as forty is to one hundred ”

“ The authority of Congress to regulate the manner of choosing federal representatives pinches when it is made thus to include also the supervision of those state elections which are, by no implied power even, within the sphere of federal prerogative. ”

“ The constitution assures them an ordinary session of five months, which opens by right on the second Tuesday in January. One house, the Chamber of Deputies, is elected by direct universal suffrage and is entirely renewed every four years; the other, the Senate, consists of 300 members, divided by the law of the 27th of February 1875 into two categories; 75 of the senators were elected for life and irremovable, and the first of them were elected by the National Assembly, but afterwards it was the Senate itself which held elections to fill up vacancies. ”

“ The legislative branch is called the Congress, and is composed of two bodies—the Senate and the House of Deputies. One deputy will be elected by every 40,000 inhabitants, and all deputies, as well as senators (two from every State) and the President, will serve for six years. Deputies must be 21 years of age, senators 30, and the President over 30. No extraordinary powers are given to the Congress, except that 14 of its members shall be chosen by itself to elect every sixth year a President, a first and a second vice-president, and to elect a successor to the second vice-president. ”

“ On March 28, the bill passed the Senate by a strict party vote. [1042] It provided that a "Grand Committee," consisting of six Senators and six Representatives elected by ballot and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, should take charge of the certificates of electoral votes immediately after they had been opened and read in the presence of Congress. ”

“ The chief of these reasons, because the parent of all the rest, is that there are in Congress no authoritative leaders who are the recognized spokesmen of their parties. Power is nowhere concentrated; it is rather deliberately and of set policy scattered amongst many small chiefs. It is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seigniories, in each of which a Standing Committee is the court-baron and its chairman lord-proprietor. ”